Google AMP is Destroying The Open Web
AMP lets the gatekeeper control what’s beyond the gate
As far back as 2012 there was evidence that some people in Indonesia who were accessing Facebook on mobile devices thought that they were not internet users. They never used any website, but they used the Facebook app. In other words, they saw the web as an open system that could contain anything, but the walled garden of Facebook was entirely separate.
As Wired put it at the time, “Facebook is on the cusp of becoming a medium unto itself — more akin to television as a whole than a single network, and more like the entire web than just one online destination.” The internet.org website that Facebook used to introduce the web to entirely new markets still exists, but many countries pushed back on the idea of a company convincing the world that its closed system is the internet.
For those of us that had internet access before Facebook was created, the existence of the open web is a universally accepted fact.
But how do we find anything on the open web?
We Google it.
Dominating the browser and OS markets
It seems clear to me that Facebook was in a hurry to convince the online newcomers of the world that it was the…
